Puritans, a name given to a large party in the reign of queen Elizabeth, who complained thai the Reformation in England wa- left in an imperfect state, many abuses both in worship and discipline being still retained. The name Puritans was derived from the frequent assertion of those who composed the party that the church of England was corrupted with the remains of popery, and that what they desired was a " pure" system of doctrine and discipline; hut the Lug-
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lish word " Puritans" happens accidentally to represent the Greek name "Cathari" which had been assumed by the Novatians, and which had been adopted in Ger- many during the Middle Ages in the vernacular form " Ketzer" for the Albigens'es and other opponents of the Church. It first came into use as the designation of an English Church party about the year 1564 (Ful- ler, ('//. Hist, ix, 66), but after a few years it got to be used also as inclusive of many who had separated from the Church of England. It was gradually superseded as regards the latter by the names of their various sects, as Independents, Presbyterians, Baptists, etc., and as regards the former by the term "Nonconformists." At a still later time, towards the end of the 17th cen- tury, (he Church Puritans were represented by " Low- Churchmen," and the Non-Church Puritans by "Dis- senters." ^
The presence of a Puritan party in the Church of England is, however, traceable for two centuries before the name of " Puritan" was assumed. In the 14th cen- tury the common people had become alienated from their parish priests by the influence of the friars, who had authority from the pope to preach and to receive confessions wherever they pleased, and quite indepen- dently of the ordinary clergy. This extra -parochial system of mission clergy weakened the hold of the Church upon the populace at. large; and, when the friars themselves began to lose their influence, aliena- tion from the clergy developed into alienation from the Church. Thus arose the Lollards of the loth centu- ry, a party which made no attempt to set up separate places of worship or a separate ministry, but which in- troduced its antisacerdotal principles into many parish churches, and made many of the clergy as strong op- ponents of the existing ecclesiastical system as was WyclifTe himself. During the trying times of the Reformation the party thus formed was largely aug- mented by those whose opposition to Romish abuses had. by a similar excess, developed into opposition to the whole of the established ecclesiastical system — men who thought that "pure" doctrine and "pure" wor- ship could only be attained by an utter departure from all that had been believed and practiced during the times when the Church of England had contracted im- purities of doctrine and worship through popish influ- ences.
While Luther's movement was at its height, the par- ty which thus became the progenitors of the Puritans was formed into a society under the name of "The Christian Brethren," which seems, from the faint view we get of it, to have been very similar to that organ- ized by John Wesley two centuries later. The head- quarters of the Brethren were in London, but they had gained a footing at both the universities, apparently among the undergraduates and younger graduates. As early as the year 1523, a body of Cambridge residents " met often at a house called ' The White Horse' to con- fer together with others, in mockery called Germans, because they conversed much in the books of the di- vines of Germany brought thence. This house was chosen because those of King's College, Queen's Col- lege, and St. John's might come in at the back side and so be the more private and undiscovered" (Strype, l-'.a-l s. Mem. i, 568, ed. 1822). Among those mentioned as so meeting are the names of Barnes, Arthur, Bilney, Latimer, and Coverdale, familiarly known as precursors of the Puritan movement in Edward VI's and queen Elizabeth's reign. A few years later, in 1527, similar gatherings were detected at Oxford, where the names of Frith, Tavemer, Udal, Farrar, and Cox, Edward VI's tutor, are found among those who met together for the same purpose (ibid, i, 569). Among the Oxford party the men of Wolsey's college held a conspicuous posi- tion, and his leniency towards all who were brought before him on charges of heresy was very striking.
The principles which were developed among the more extreme section of these early Puritans may be
seen by an extract from a work written by William Tyndale (himself a friar and a priest), who was their representative man. Writing of the ministerial office-, he says: "Subdeacon, deacon, priest, bishop, cardinal, patriarch, and pope be names of offices and service, or should be, and not sacraments. There is no promise coupled therewith. If they minister their offices truly, it is a sign that Christ's Spirit is in them; if not, that the devil is in them. . . . O dreamers and natural beasts, without the seal of the Spirit of God, but sealed with' the mark of the beast, and with cankered consciences, . . . By a prLst understand nothing but an elder to teach the younger, and to bring them unto the full knowledge and understanding of Christ, and to minister the sacraments which Christ ordained, which is also nothing but to preach Christ's promises. . . . According, therefore, as every man believeth God's promises, long- eth for them, and is diligent to pray unto God to fulfil them, so is his prayer heard; and as good is the prayer of a cobbler as <if a cardinal, and of a butcher as of a bishop; and the blessing of a baker that knoweth the truth is as good as the blessing of our most holy father the pope. . . . Neither is there any other manner of cer- emony at all required in making our spiritual officers than to choose an able person, and then to rehearse him his duty, and give him his charge, and so put him in his room" (Obed. of Christ. Man [Park. Soc. ed.], p. 254-259).